"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
I'm not sure if this was a joke or not, but I read somewhere recently that about 10 years after Concorde started carrying passengers they did some research into whether the mostly wealthy passengers using it thought the fares were too expensive, too cheap, or about right. Apparently most of the replies said that they were expecting it to cost a lot more than it did, and after that they put the fares up. Sounds like a slightly weird story though.
Yes that’s true. Most passengers had no idea what the ticket cost, and thought it was a lot more than it actually was. So the prices went up to match the expectations of the customers. BA went from losing a fortune to breaking even on the Concorde fleet.
I worked with someone in the late 80’s who moonlighted as a courier and would regularly get sent on Concorde to deliver documents to an address in NYC… return in economy on a 747
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
I would say, from the limited evidence of her interviews, that Margaret Ferrier is not especially bright.
She found herself by inadvertence in a difficult position and did not behave well.
I feel a bit sorry for her. She did a stupid thing, but her fault is stupidity.
I'm not sure that I would be in favour of a recall, if I lived in R&HW.
(And although not bright, she is far from the stupidest MP. She is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack).
If she really is not that bright how on earth did she get selected by the SNP, unless she was a paper candidate that got lucky ?
The selection of MPs is not an IQ test.
No kidding. But it is a test of their character and personality.
But there is still a process for candidate approval and then candidate selection for the seat.
Have you not heard Daniel Kawczynski MP speak ? Or Carolyn Harris MP ?
There are many very thick MPs.
The saddest in recent history was I think Jim Devine, the Labour MP for Livingston who ended up in prison.
He was so thick he admitted to expenses fraud on prime time TV because he did not even understand that what he had done was fraud. I felt alarmed when he was being interviewed, it was painful.
A pb.com poll for the Thickest MP would be genuinely very competitive.
(The standard of the Welsh Senedd Members is -- disturbingly enough -- even lower than the MPs).
Carolyn Harris may speak with a thick Swansea brogue but her work on the menopause is quite exceptional. She has a strong local following. I would place her substantially higher than a significant number of MPs of all stripes. Labour MPs in Wales are so dreary I can't even think of that many, although Steve Kinnock deserves a mention. But hen-pecked Steve is a titan compared to funster heroes like Jamie Wallace and Rob Roberts.
I can't disagree with the Senedd intake, although even with most Labour members scoring a solid 0/10, we have RT, Paul Davies and Nick Ramsey struggling to score as high as a zero.
No problems with a Swansea accent, but IMO she is not pleasant:
Surely Johnson will face a by-election then? Another Labour gain?
Possibly. I still expect the committee to pull its punch. It isn't that they don't conclude he is guilty as sin. Its that they fear a big punishment will be contested by mince MPs and bring the committee itself into disrepute.
So I expect a sanction just below the recall point which will slip by without much noise before his loyal followers start ramping him up as having been vindicated.
I don't agree. This decision makes it incredibly difficult in practice to justify a lighter sanction for Johnson. A bar has been set.
I would say, from the limited evidence of her interviews, that Margaret Ferrier is not especially bright.
She found herself by inadvertence in a difficult position and did not behave well.
I feel a bit sorry for her. She did a stupid thing, but her fault is stupidity.
I'm not sure that I would be in favour of a recall, if I lived in R&HW.
(And although not bright, she is far from the stupidest MP. She is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack).
If she really is not that bright how on earth did she get selected by the SNP, unless she was a paper candidate that got lucky ?
The selection of MPs is not an IQ test.
No kidding. But it is a test of their character and personality.
But there is still a process for candidate approval and then candidate selection for the seat.
Have you not heard Daniel Kawczynski MP speak ? Or Carolyn Harris MP ?
There are many very thick MPs.
The saddest in recent history was I think Jim Devine, the Labour MP for Livingston who ended up in prison.
He was so thick he admitted to expenses fraud on prime time TV because he did not even understand that what he had done was fraud. I felt alarmed when he was being interviewed, it was painful.
A pb.com poll for the Thickest MP would be genuinely very competitive.
(The standard of the Welsh Senedd Members is -- disturbingly enough -- even lower than the MPs).
Carolyn Harris may speak with a thick Swansea brogue but her work on the menopause is quite exceptional. She has a strong local following. I would place her substantially higher than a significant number of MPs of all stripes. Labour MPs in Wales are so dreary I can't even think of that many, although Steve Kinnock deserves a mention. But hen-pecked Steve is a titan compared to funster heroes like Jamie Wallace and Rob Roberts.
I can't disagree with the Senedd intake, although even with most Labour members scoring a solid 0/10, we have RT, Paul Davies and Nick Ramsey struggling to score as high as a zero.
No problems with a Swansea accent, but IMO she is not pleasant:
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
I take the point, but it is exactly in times like these that we need parties who are willing to do some of the sunlit uplands stuff. Parties who are serious about tackling the challenges our country faces. There is no point winning power to tinker with budgets for a few years while things get worse.
Of course SKS is playing a tricky balancing act but then any party leader aspiring to power is. This didn’t prevent them from making strong and considered cases as to how their agenda will make peoples lives measurably better. At present, I hear a lot about tax burdens and competence, I hear very little about ideas and solutions.
Perhaps we could compile a list of big idea, sunlit uplands, non-unicorn solutions open to SKS that would not fail electorally under the Tory 'Tax Bombshell' attack and would be highly likely to win the election.
SFAICS that list has precisely Zero items on it, and I am am unable to suggest the first item for it.
Like all others I can suggest lots that can't be on the list, beginning with (1) Join EEA/EFTA (2) any policy at all on migrants/refugees (3) anything that increases taxes (4) anything that removes a halfpenny from any pensioner.
Who are the idiots shouting from the public gallery?
Protesting gainst oil and gas/climate change I think. If (as in previous cases) they were protesting against the GRR etc, the idiots would of course be elevated to hero status.
Jofra Archer: England paceman 'to go straight into Ashes' after IPL spell
Fast bowler Jofra Archer is unlikely to play any red-ball cricket before the Ashes series starts in June, according to Sussex head coach Paul Farbrace.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
I take the point, but it is exactly in times like these that we need parties who are willing to do some of the sunlit uplands stuff. Parties who are serious about tackling the challenges our country faces. There is no point winning power to tinker with budgets for a few years while things get worse.
Of course SKS is playing a tricky balancing act but then any party leader aspiring to power is. This didn’t prevent them from making strong and considered cases as to how their agenda will make peoples lives measurably better. At present, I hear a lot about tax burdens and competence, I hear very little about ideas and solutions.
Perhaps we could compile a list of big idea, sunlit uplands, non-unicorn solutions open to SKS that would not fail electorally under the Tory 'Tax Bombshell' attack and would be highly likely to win the election.
SFAICS that list has precisely Zero items on it, and I am am unable to suggest the first item for it.
Like all others I can suggest lots that can't be on the list, beginning with (1) Join EEA/EFTA (2) any policy at all on migrants/refugees (3) anything that increases taxes (4) anything that removes a halfpenny from any pensioner.
We can look forward to a real bummer of an election campaign in 2024, then.
No-one will dare to put forward any policies that actually address any of the huge problems we have.
And there will be a cacophany of right-wing and left-wing shitposting, amplified by the horrors of social media.
Who are the idiots shouting from the public gallery?
Protesting gainst oil and gas/climate change I think. If (as in previous cases) they were protesting against the GRR etc, the idiots would of course be elevated to hero status.
Who are the idiots shouting from the public gallery?
Protesting gainst oil and gas/climate change I think. If (as in previous cases) they were protesting against the GRR etc, the idiots would of course be elevated to hero status.
Before anyone says "Boris is toast", stop and think about how many times that has been said. Despite everything the man is still here, will continue to still be here, and maintains a loyal fan base.
Putting him back into Downing Street would be a total desperation move for the Tories. In more dignified times it wouldn't be remotely feasible. But this is the party of corrupt grifters, with mince MPs voting to detain the forrin just not in my constituency thanks, foaming on about global social conspiracies like local shops which have infested once proud places like Doncaster.
Bring Back Boris - the man who won the 2019 election. The man who Got Brexit Done. The man who got all the big calls right. The vaccine. Ukraine. He's so much better than Playschool Sunak and the rest of the pygmies in the cabinet!
Yes I know. Its bollocks. But these are fairy stories whispered to morons. Who want to hear fairy stories. They're watching Lee Anderson shat his pants on GBeebies and thinking it news. When you are desperate, you fall back on any option there is to turn things around.
#BBB. January 2025.
If they are all watching GBNews there aren’t very many of them…
The committee was split on the severity of [Margaret Ferrier’s] punishment, with Allan Dorans, the SNP MP, and the Conservative members Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, all voting to have her suspended for just nine days.
The committee was split on the severity of [Margaret Ferrier’s] punishment, with Allan Dorans, the SNP MP, and the Conservative members Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, all voting to have her suspended for just nine days.
Margaret Ferrier (ex-SNP) facing a 30 day suspension from the Commons for not isolating after a positive COVID test.
I know it’s a very different set of circumstances, but it’s hard to see Ferrier getting suspended and facing a possible by-election, but then Johnson getting off.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
I'm not sure if this was a joke or not, but I read somewhere recently that about 10 years after Concorde started carrying passengers they did some research into whether the mostly wealthy passengers using it thought the fares were too expensive, too cheap, or about right. Apparently most of the replies said that they were expecting it to cost a lot more than it did, and after that they put the fares up. Sounds like a slightly weird story though.
Yes that’s true. Most passengers had no idea what the ticket cost, and thought it was a lot more than it actually was. So the prices went up to match the expectations of the customers. BA went from losing a fortune to breaking even on the Concorde fleet.
Only, iirc, after the Govt had written off most if not all of the development cost.....
The committee was split on the severity of [Margaret Ferrier’s] punishment, with Allan Dorans, the SNP MP, and the Conservative members Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, all voting to have her suspended for just nine days.
The committee was split on the severity of [Margaret Ferrier’s] punishment, with Allan Dorans, the SNP MP, and the Conservative members Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, all voting to have her suspended for just nine days.
Like I said earlier, the Committee is terrified of having to throw the book at Boris. They fear deselection by their associations if nothing else. So we will end up with the fatal blow being pulled, he survives, and then Dorries et al can prattle on about how he has been vindicated.
Does anyone think the SNP could hold on in Rutherglen ?
I think it would have been possible pre GRA with Sturgeon still in charge...
I think they *could*... 1) Labour could easily be complacent 2) Unlike a GE, Labour won't be able to campaign that electing a Labour MP will help Labour get into government. Any Labour MP elected now will just be a backbench opposition MP. 3) I expect Humza will ensure SNP HQ throw all the resources and activists they can muster to defend it
November. Sheesh, they're going to drag this out to the bitter end aren't they ?
The bitter end would be 28 January 2025. Don’t rule it out.
This hits the celebrated, and unresolved 'surprise test' problem in philosophy.
Which is: Teacher: 'During this term you shall have surprise test on Tudor History'.
As it is a surprise it can't be the last day of term; so it can't be the day before, etc and so on for each day. So there can't be a surprise test at all.
But in reality there can. Elections are the same. Until the last three weeks - when it can't be a surprise. Surprise is important for the party in government.
This suggests September or October for the election.
Edit: I see turbotubbs has been thinking the same.
I am intrigued that you think a surprise test on Tudor history is as bad as being shot at dawn on a day to be determined.
You must have had a really rubbish History teacher for there to be such trauma.
Its in keeping with the attrition rate for those in the Tudor royal circle...
Surely you mean it's not on a Parr?
It would be Aragon of me to think so. Howard it come to this?
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
You are absolutely right. In fact it the effect went far further than that. The initial process of automatic transfer across based on name matches worked in homeowning areas where people were settled, so almost all pensioners didn't even need to bother to register. Yet the process was ineffective in areas of transient population so people in those areas found they had to re-register. We did a study by polling district in our local authority and the difference was stark. 95% transferred across in the most Conservative areas, barely 50% in the deprived areas especially those with private renting and ethnic minorities.
The net effect of the manipulation of the electoral register is that there are relatively more seats in Conservative areas than there should be, and the voters in those seats are also more skewed towards the Conservatives than they should be. By design, not accident.
I think that, with all the different instances of voter suppression that have taken place over the Conservative years, there is going to be a huge reaction when a non-Conservative government takes power in 2024. We will see a move to boundaries based on ONS population estimates (as in the US), an efficient system of electoral registration that draws heavily on administrative records to automatically register people by default and hopefully has effective sanctions* for those who don't keep their registration up to date, and an overturning of the latest voter ID requirements.
*Effective sanctions = Making registration a condition for receiving any form of state support, effectively the system in place in Germany.
On a point of accuracy, the US uses census findings, not estimates.
I don’t agree with using population. After all, the purpose of a GE is to choose a government, and if you draw boundaries to equalize population rather than electorate then you are applying a positive weighting to electors that happen to live in an area where a relatively large number of inhabitants are not registered, and perhaps are not qualified to vote (e.g. an area with a lot of young families, hence a disproportionate number of under-18s, or one with a large number of resident aliens not from Commonwealth countries or the Irish Republic). It’s hard to see why your vote should effectively count for more just because you live in such an area.
IER has the benefit of making malpractice slightly more difficult and it also stops the former practice of some LAs of simply carrying forward existing registrations from year to year even if no new registration form has been submitted. I had a friend, a Hackney resident, who died in 2010 and for years after, his widow was distressed to receive a voting card for him every time an election came round. She contacted the council several times but was ignored. It was only IER that put a stop to it.
The new ID requirements are perfectly reasonable and I hope future governments will retain them. I’d like to go further and take firmer measures to tackle postal vote fraud.
I agree with using other admin records to keep registers accurate, though, and if the German system is indeed as you describe, that’s well worth a look.
Margaret Ferrier (ex-SNP) facing a 30 day suspension from the Commons for not isolating after a positive COVID test.
I know it’s a very different set of circumstances, but it’s hard to see Ferrier getting suspended and facing a possible by-election, but then Johnson getting off.
Edit: I see I am late to the discussion - apols
It's dead easy to see it.
It would just be outrageous given Johnson isn't just under investigation for breaking Covid regulations but for lying to Parliament.
The committee was split on the severity of [Margaret Ferrier’s] punishment, with Allan Dorans, the SNP MP, and the Conservative members Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, all voting to have her suspended for just nine days.
Like I said earlier, the Committee is terrified of having to throw the book at Boris. They fear deselection by their associations if nothing else. So we will end up with the fatal blow being pulled, he survives, and then Dorries et al can prattle on about how he has been vindicated.
Not an optimal result for Sunak, and in a number of ways. For starters there is the danger of Owen Patterson redux, and I suspect if one player wants the dangerous, duplicitous ******, Johnson out of his perfectly groomed hair, it is Sunak.
The committee was split on the severity of [Margaret Ferrier’s] punishment, with Allan Dorans, the SNP MP, and the Conservative members Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, all voting to have her suspended for just nine days.
Like I said earlier, the Committee is terrified of having to throw the book at Boris. They fear deselection by their associations if nothing else. So we will end up with the fatal blow being pulled, he survives, and then Dorries et al can prattle on about how he has been vindicated.
"Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP whose Gainsborough constituency contains RAF Scampton, which was the base for the Dambusters bomber squadron in the second world war, said the council would seek an injunction to stop it being used and that he supported it."
Will WW2 EVER be over for the English? What the fuck does what happened 80 years ago have to do with what happens to the site now?
Well it was also the base for RAFAT until about a year ago. You know those red planes that are a great recruiting tool and represent the country abroad do nothing much?
I’ll yield to superior knowledge here (ie Dura Ace), but has anyone ever joined the RAF because of the Red Arrows? Even when I was a pre adolescent fanboi, an RA aircraft never made it into my gluey air wing of model aircraft (Folland Gnats in my day I think). I’d imagine the RAF are pretty oversubscribed for air crew candidates at the best of times.
Anecdotal evidence I know, but they definitely piqued my interest in planes at the 1988 Farnborough airshow. The Reds, and standing right behind Concorde as it took off!
Concorde was wonderful but a bit of a damp squib when the speed on the cabin went to Mach 2. V nice Beef Wellington for Lunch iirc. Pleased to have been on it if only round the Bay of Biscay...
But the defining moment was not reaching Mach 2 but the point where the Bristol Channel was cleared and the pilot put the burners on… with a tail wind, reached JFK in about 3h20m on the one occasion I had the pleasure of flying, still have a bag with all the tickets, luggage tags, menu etc somewhere…
Sure it was but my trip iirc was 199 quid. Jfk was thousands return
In 1989 paid £1,500* for Concorde -> NYC -> 5 nights in Waldorf Astoria -> QE2 to Southampton… seemed a bargain at the time.
Edit: *£3,674 in today’s money
I'm not sure if this was a joke or not, but I read somewhere recently that about 10 years after Concorde started carrying passengers they did some research into whether the mostly wealthy passengers using it thought the fares were too expensive, too cheap, or about right. Apparently most of the replies said that they were expecting it to cost a lot more than it did, and after that they put the fares up. Sounds like a slightly weird story though.
Yes that’s true. Most passengers had no idea what the ticket cost, and thought it was a lot more than it actually was. So the prices went up to match the expectations of the customers. BA went from losing a fortune to breaking even on the Concorde fleet.
Only, iirc, after the Govt had written off most if not all of the development cost.....
Yup. Concorde was a classic example of a government project heading to a known failure. The failure was known years in advance, but the political impetus was too high to allow it to be stopped.
The committee was split on the severity of [Margaret Ferrier’s] punishment, with Allan Dorans, the SNP MP, and the Conservative members Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, all voting to have her suspended for just nine days.
Like I said earlier, the Committee is terrified of having to throw the book at Boris. They fear deselection by their associations if nothing else. So we will end up with the fatal blow being pulled, he survives, and then Dorries et al can prattle on about how he has been vindicated.
And the rest of us can continue to ignore her.
c. 25% of the electorate don't want to ignore her. They want the Tories to win the election because they honestly think they are the best choice for government. Dorries / Anderson / GBeebies / Mail / Sun - the main cheerleaders for the Tories and also for Boris.
If Sunak continues to fail to recover the Truss deficit then all of these pundits and outlets will be banging the drum for Boris once more.
The committee was split on the severity of [Margaret Ferrier’s] punishment, with Allan Dorans, the SNP MP, and the Conservative members Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, all voting to have her suspended for just nine days.
By the same token the other members have every interest in a more severe sanction. Especially labour.
This should all be undertaken by non politicians, not politicians.
The committee was split on the severity of [Margaret Ferrier’s] punishment, with Allan Dorans, the SNP MP, and the Conservative members Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, all voting to have her suspended for just nine days.
I wonder how long it'll be before second-hand bookshops become targets for woke-ists, because they're places where you can buy old copies of books that haven't been "updated" with the latest language. For example, if you want to buy a copy of a Roald Dahl book that definitely hasn't been altered, a second-hand bookshop will be the place to go.
But we already have 'woke bookshops' being condemned on PB.
Abe, Amazon, Biblio etc and second hand bookshops at the moment are, maybe accidentally, stout defenders of freedom of thought and liberty to look at texts as they were written.
The committee was split on the severity of [Margaret Ferrier’s] punishment, with Allan Dorans, the SNP MP, and the Conservative members Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, all voting to have her suspended for just nine days.
So Johnson gets 9 days. Figures.
The Committee on Standards, AIUI, has 7 MP members, but also 7 lay members. With 4 of the MPs voting for 9 days suspension, presumably a majority of lay members went for the longer time.
Johnson faces the slightly different Privileges Committee, which has the same MPs except a different Labour MP as chair, but no lay members. If the MPs vote the same way in his case, Johnson survives with a 9-day suspension, with 3 Con + 1 SNP against 1 Con + 2 Lab. However, Dorans is probably voting in a partisan way: he’s protecting the SNP in the Ferrier vote, but could swap sides for the Johnson vote. Then Johnson is looking at a longer suspension and possible by-election. Presumably the key swing vote is actually the Tory who voted for a longer suspension for Ferrier: Andy Carter.
"The Russians were so confident that they would succeed [in capturing Kyiv] in hours that their support apparatus had rented apartments around the key sites from which their special forces were supposed to operate in Kyiv." https://twitter.com/tom_bullock_/status/1641395143633690627
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
I take the point, but it is exactly in times like these that we need parties who are willing to do some of the sunlit uplands stuff. Parties who are serious about tackling the challenges our country faces. There is no point winning power to tinker with budgets for a few years while things get worse.
Of course SKS is playing a tricky balancing act but then any party leader aspiring to power is. This didn’t prevent them from making strong and considered cases as to how their agenda will make peoples lives measurably better. At present, I hear a lot about tax burdens and competence, I hear very little about ideas and solutions.
Perhaps we could compile a list of big idea, sunlit uplands, non-unicorn solutions open to SKS that would not fail electorally under the Tory 'Tax Bombshell' attack and would be highly likely to win the election.
SFAICS that list has precisely Zero items on it, and I am am unable to suggest the first item for it.
Like all others I can suggest lots that can't be on the list, beginning with (1) Join EEA/EFTA (2) any policy at all on migrants/refugees (3) anything that increases taxes (4) anything that removes a halfpenny from any pensioner.
Pledge a methodical increase training medical staff each year until output equals 100% of requirement for the NHS.
Change working practises in the NHS, so that contracting is reduced, which will save money. Paying more per standard hour may be required but still cheaper than agency rates.
Break down the barriers between degrees, apprenticeships and other training - a modular system where a New Degree can consist of a mix of academic and practical work over a period of time. Companies that do such training (if it meets strict criteria) can claim 100% (or even more) for tax relief.
100k fines for employing undocumented workers. Same for deliberate pay below minimum wage. 50k to the employee and indefinite leave to remain for the undocumented - if they give evidence that leads to a conviction.
Go after the small boat organisers - £1m fine in addition to a prosecution for endangering life (make that extraditable offence, so international warrants can be issued). Half the fine to those who give evidence on conviction.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
You are absolutely right. In fact it the effect went far further than that. The initial process of automatic transfer across based on name matches worked in homeowning areas where people were settled, so almost all pensioners didn't even need to bother to register. Yet the process was ineffective in areas of transient population so people in those areas found they had to re-register. We did a study by polling district in our local authority and the difference was stark. 95% transferred across in the most Conservative areas, barely 50% in the deprived areas especially those with private renting and ethnic minorities.
The net effect of the manipulation of the electoral register is that there are relatively more seats in Conservative areas than there should be, and the voters in those seats are also more skewed towards the Conservatives than they should be. By design, not accident.
I think that, with all the different instances of voter suppression that have taken place over the Conservative years, there is going to be a huge reaction when a non-Conservative government takes power in 2024. We will see a move to boundaries based on ONS population estimates (as in the US), an efficient system of electoral registration that draws heavily on administrative records to automatically register people by default and hopefully has effective sanctions* for those who don't keep their registration up to date, and an overturning of the latest voter ID requirements.
*Effective sanctions = Making registration a condition for receiving any form of state support, effectively the system in place in Germany.
On a point of accuracy, the US uses census findings, not estimates.
I don’t agree with using population. After all, the purpose of a GE is to choose a government, and if you draw boundaries to equalize population rather than electorate then you are applying a positive weighting to electors that happen to live in an area where a relatively large number of inhabitants are not registered, and perhaps are not qualified to vote (e.g. an area with a lot of young families, hence a disproportionate number of under-18s, or one with a large number of resident aliens not from Commonwealth countries or the Irish Republic). It’s hard to see why your vote should effectively count for more just because you live in such an area.
IER has the benefit of making malpractice slightly more difficult and it also stops the former practice of some LAs of simply carrying forward existing registrations from year to year even if no new registration form has been submitted. I had a friend, a Hackney resident, who died in 2010 and for years after, his widow was distressed to receive a voting card for him every time an election came round. She contacted the council several times but was ignored. It was only IER that put a stop to it.
The new ID requirements are perfectly reasonable and I hope future governments will retain them. I’d like to go further and take firmer measures to tackle postal vote fraud.
I agree with using other admin records to keep registers accurate, though, and if the German system is indeed as you describe, that’s well worth a look.
The German system mentioned in this thread is somewhat different to just compulsory voter registration. Here, it is compulsory to officially register your address. If you don't do this then you have real problems doing lots of things, which includes getting benefits, but also registration for public health insurance, updating a driving licence.
The ID-Card is linked to this registration and so is the voting register. I have never needed to register with an electoral register as it is done automatically.
There is probably a very small minority who deliberately forget to register a change of address for political reasons, but sooner or later you will have some problem with it. There are certainly some overseas casual workers who never register, often to avoid paying health isurance, but these are people who are really part of the black market and usually are only here for a year or two, or they end up registering sooner or later.
On another comment about using OPN population for constituency boundaries being biassed: if the ONS has good information on numbers of people living in specific areas, they certainly also have good information about numbers of adults/children in that area.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
I take the point, but it is exactly in times like these that we need parties who are willing to do some of the sunlit uplands stuff. Parties who are serious about tackling the challenges our country faces. There is no point winning power to tinker with budgets for a few years while things get worse.
Of course SKS is playing a tricky balancing act but then any party leader aspiring to power is. This didn’t prevent them from making strong and considered cases as to how their agenda will make peoples lives measurably better. At present, I hear a lot about tax burdens and competence, I hear very little about ideas and solutions.
Perhaps we could compile a list of big idea, sunlit uplands, non-unicorn solutions open to SKS that would not fail electorally under the Tory 'Tax Bombshell' attack and would be highly likely to win the election.
SFAICS that list has precisely Zero items on it, and I am am unable to suggest the first item for it.
Like all others I can suggest lots that can't be on the list, beginning with (1) Join EEA/EFTA (2) any policy at all on migrants/refugees (3) anything that increases taxes (4) anything that removes a halfpenny from any pensioner.
We can look forward to a real bummer of an election campaign in 2024, then.
No-one will dare to put forward any policies that actually address any of the huge problems we have.
And there will be a cacophany of right-wing and left-wing shitposting, amplified by the horrors of social media.
I might skip it ... again.
I think that's the only likely conclusion at the moment. The outside possibilities of a different sort would be if a new and urgent issue came up which all parties could use to focus their (often non existent) differences on.
We need something novel to pep up the election. Sweden to declare war on the UK. Banning Facebook. A proper focus on red throated diver populations. Abolishing limited overs cricket. Restoring Middlesex as a proper county. Putting Penrith back into Cumberland. Compulsory pink custard with spotted dick in (free) primary school dinners.
Sorry to hark back to discussion on the previous thread, but you can’t blame Cameron and Osborne for the use of the registered electorate, rather than population, as the basis for revising Parliamentary boundaries. This practice has been in place since long before either of them was born: it was first adopted for the interim review of exceptionally large seats that took effect at the 1945 GE and it has applied at every review since then. The last general review to be based on population rather than electorate was that of 1918, 105 years ago.
Do try to keep up.
Cameron and Osborne first purged the rolls and made registration harder in order to reduced the number of registered electors, and hence seats, in Labour-leaning areas and increase those in Conservative-leaning areas. Do try to keep up.
They didn't make registration harder. Do try to keep up.
Yes they did. Saying "no they didn't" doesn't make it so. Individual registration was designed very specifically to slow the registration rate of young people as they came of age. Successfully so. A lot of work needed by non-Tory activists to ensure people actually got themselves registered after that change.
You are absolutely right. In fact it the effect went far further than that. The initial process of automatic transfer across based on name matches worked in homeowning areas where people were settled, so almost all pensioners didn't even need to bother to register. Yet the process was ineffective in areas of transient population so people in those areas found they had to re-register. We did a study by polling district in our local authority and the difference was stark. 95% transferred across in the most Conservative areas, barely 50% in the deprived areas especially those with private renting and ethnic minorities.
The net effect of the manipulation of the electoral register is that there are relatively more seats in Conservative areas than there should be, and the voters in those seats are also more skewed towards the Conservatives than they should be. By design, not accident.
I think that, with all the different instances of voter suppression that have taken place over the Conservative years, there is going to be a huge reaction when a non-Conservative government takes power in 2024. We will see a move to boundaries based on ONS population estimates (as in the US), an efficient system of electoral registration that draws heavily on administrative records to automatically register people by default and hopefully has effective sanctions* for those who don't keep their registration up to date, and an overturning of the latest voter ID requirements.
*Effective sanctions = Making registration a condition for receiving any form of state support, effectively the system in place in Germany.
On a point of accuracy, the US uses census findings, not estimates.
I don’t agree with using population. After all, the purpose of a GE is to choose a government, and if you draw boundaries to equalize population rather than electorate then you are applying a positive weighting to electors that happen to live in an area where a relatively large number of inhabitants are not registered, and perhaps are not qualified to vote (e.g. an area with a lot of young families, hence a disproportionate number of under-18s, or one with a large number of resident aliens not from Commonwealth countries or the Irish Republic). It’s hard to see why your vote should effectively count for more just because you live in such an area.
IER has the benefit of making malpractice slightly more difficult and it also stops the former practice of some LAs of simply carrying forward existing registrations from year to year even if no new registration form has been submitted. I had a friend, a Hackney resident, who died in 2010 and for years after, his widow was distressed to receive a voting card for him every time an election came round. She contacted the council several times but was ignored. It was only IER that put a stop to it.
The new ID requirements are perfectly reasonable and I hope future governments will retain them. I’d like to go further and take firmer measures to tackle postal vote fraud.
I agree with using other admin records to keep registers accurate, though, and if the German system is indeed as you describe, that’s well worth a look.
The German system mentioned in this thread is somewhat different to just compulsory voter registration. Here, it is compulsory to officially register your address. If you don't do this then you have real problems doing lots of things, which includes getting benefits, but also registration for public health insurance, updating a driving licence.
The ID-Card is linked to this registration and so is the voting register. I have never needed to register with an electoral register as it is done automatically.
There is probably a very small minority who deliberately forget to register a change of address for political reasons, but sooner or later you will have some problem with it. There are certainly some overseas casual workers who never register, often to avoid paying health isurance, but these are people who are really part of the black market and usually are only here for a year or two, or they end up registering sooner or later.
On another comment about using OPN population for constituency boundaries being biassed: if the ONS has good information on numbers of people living in specific areas, they certainly also have good information about numbers of adults/children in that area.
A sides effect of the vaccination campaign was to show the ONS populations estimates for some areas were crude guesses.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
I take the point, but it is exactly in times like these that we need parties who are willing to do some of the sunlit uplands stuff. Parties who are serious about tackling the challenges our country faces. There is no point winning power to tinker with budgets for a few years while things get worse.
Of course SKS is playing a tricky balancing act but then any party leader aspiring to power is. This didn’t prevent them from making strong and considered cases as to how their agenda will make peoples lives measurably better. At present, I hear a lot about tax burdens and competence, I hear very little about ideas and solutions.
Perhaps we could compile a list of big idea, sunlit uplands, non-unicorn solutions open to SKS that would not fail electorally under the Tory 'Tax Bombshell' attack and would be highly likely to win the election.
SFAICS that list has precisely Zero items on it, and I am am unable to suggest the first item for it.
Like all others I can suggest lots that can't be on the list, beginning with (1) Join EEA/EFTA (2) any policy at all on migrants/refugees (3) anything that increases taxes (4) anything that removes a halfpenny from any pensioner.
Pledge a methodical increase training medical staff each year until output equals 100% of requirement for the NHS.
Change working practises in the NHS, so that contracting is reduced, which will save money. Paying more per standard hour may be required but still cheaper than agency rates.
Break down the barriers between degrees, apprenticeships and other training - a modular system where a New Degree can consist of a mix of academic and practical work over a period of time. Companies that do such training (if it meets strict criteria) can claim 100% (or even more) for tax relief.
100k fines for employing undocumented workers. Same for deliberate pay below minimum wage. 50k to the employee and indefinite leave to remain for the undocumented - if they give evidence that leads to a conviction.
Go after the small boat organisers - £1m fine in addition to a prosecution for endangering life (make that extraditable offence, so international warrants can be issued). Half the fine to those who give evidence on conviction.
I'd say a lot depends on the quality of the SNP & other candidates. What about Nicola?
It is probably way less stressful criticising the Govt in Westminster as an MP than having to run the Scottish Govt.
Who knows what Alba will do? If I lived in R&HW, I'd certainly vote for @malcolmg if he stands
Circumstances of a by-election are quite important. That the SNP chose someone so unsuited to the role was very clear by her conduct. They are going to have to find a candidate of unparalled excellence to get a hearing.
No. City of Chester just reelected a Labour MP when the previous MP was kicked out for sexual harassment. Labour were not punished because they had previously chosen someone unsuitable.
I think the SNP need a good candidate, sure, but not an unparalleled one.
Thanks for your vote but I am afraid I will not be standing , though given the calibre of what si around just now I could replace 10 of them and not break sweat.
Does anyone think the SNP could hold on in Rutherglen ?
I think it would have been possible pre GRA with Sturgeon still in charge...
Given everyone knows they are a bunch of crooks and the rats at the top have scarpered it will be tough though depends on candidates. If Useless puts up one of the woke weirdo acolytes they will get hammered.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
I take the point, but it is exactly in times like these that we need parties who are willing to do some of the sunlit uplands stuff. Parties who are serious about tackling the challenges our country faces. There is no point winning power to tinker with budgets for a few years while things get worse.
Of course SKS is playing a tricky balancing act but then any party leader aspiring to power is. This didn’t prevent them from making strong and considered cases as to how their agenda will make peoples lives measurably better. At present, I hear a lot about tax burdens and competence, I hear very little about ideas and solutions.
Perhaps we could compile a list of big idea, sunlit uplands, non-unicorn solutions open to SKS that would not fail electorally under the Tory 'Tax Bombshell' attack and would be highly likely to win the election.
SFAICS that list has precisely Zero items on it, and I am am unable to suggest the first item for it.
Like all others I can suggest lots that can't be on the list, beginning with (1) Join EEA/EFTA (2) any policy at all on migrants/refugees (3) anything that increases taxes (4) anything that removes a halfpenny from any pensioner.
Pledge a methodical increase training medical staff each year until output equals 100% of requirement for the NHS.
Change working practises in the NHS, so that contracting is reduced, which will save money. Paying more per standard hour may be required but still cheaper than agency rates.
Break down the barriers between degrees, apprenticeships and other training - a modular system where a New Degree can consist of a mix of academic and practical work over a period of time. Companies that do such training (if it meets strict criteria) can claim 100% (or even more) for tax relief.
100k fines for employing undocumented workers. Same for deliberate pay below minimum wage. 50k to the employee and indefinite leave to remain for the undocumented - if they give evidence that leads to a conviction.
Go after the small boat organisers - £1m fine in addition to a prosecution for endangering life (make that extraditable offence, so international warrants can be issued). Half the fine to those who give evidence on conviction.
Abolish leasehold.
An interesting idea - how will you deal with those who don’t want to take over the shared management of flats?
There seems a lot to come out in the story. Now Kaba may be a complete innocent, and even if he was not, didn't deserve to be shot dead without trial, but I somehow think things will be somewhat complex.
Thoughts on SKS and Labour council tax freeze policy this AM…. Hmmmm.
Might be smart politics but I’m not sure this bodes well for a 2024 manifesto. Once again the tax on the 1% is being wheeled out to allow for a CT freeze.
This constant reusing of windfall tax/tax on high earners could lay them open to claims of lacking seriousness.
I still maintain they are the best option for 2024 and it would take a lot, put bluntly, for me to change my mind on that front but I am starting to have concerns that they haven’t really grasped just how fundamentally transformative their government needs to be to make the tough decisions needed.
Reeves needs to be careful with her promises for the use of never ending windfall taxes
Labour's policy is to decimate the Scottish oil and gas industry with no new licences and high taxes resulting in much diminished taxes anyway
Furthermore what happens next year when council taxes rise again plus this year's or is her idea to continue subsidising these rises which is our case this year was 9.9% as I posted earlier
Of course she can make these promises knowing that she will not be in power to implement them so it is a free hit, it may be politics but it certainly is not economics
Let’s not forget that local government is really in need of extra investment too.
I don’t have a problem with Labour making arguments that those with broader shoulders can contribute more (they can, within reason), or to transform elements of the economy (if they can demonstrate ways of doing so that will make economic sense). The problem is at the moment there is no big idea. Tinkering round the edges and playing the soak the rich tune. Where’s the dynamism and new ways of thinking that we need from a new government?
I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they are keeping their powder dry but… hmmm. I’m unenthusiastic right now.
They're starting to show their hand now and it's looking like the same old stuff. As I was rather afraid of - if they had big ideas they would have been talking about them months ago.
'Unenthusiastic' is the best a party can hope for to win an election at the moment. To be not actually hated and execrated is the aim.
There is currently £2.4 trn debt, £100 bn deficit, every single group in the public sector thinks it is massively underpaid, tax levels are at recent record highs, inflation is in double figures, and it politically toxic both to support or oppose Brexit. It is also politically toxic to have any views whatever on the migrant/refugee/boats crisis.
Labour might think up a few retail policies to ice the non-cake. But as for Big Ideas....Even PBers are notably short of ones which could win elections without at the same time losing them. SKS is doing well in a very tricky minefield. And that's even without bearing in mind he still has Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon in the party.
I take the point, but it is exactly in times like these that we need parties who are willing to do some of the sunlit uplands stuff. Parties who are serious about tackling the challenges our country faces. There is no point winning power to tinker with budgets for a few years while things get worse.
Of course SKS is playing a tricky balancing act but then any party leader aspiring to power is. This didn’t prevent them from making strong and considered cases as to how their agenda will make peoples lives measurably better. At present, I hear a lot about tax burdens and competence, I hear very little about ideas and solutions.
Perhaps we could compile a list of big idea, sunlit uplands, non-unicorn solutions open to SKS that would not fail electorally under the Tory 'Tax Bombshell' attack and would be highly likely to win the election.
SFAICS that list has precisely Zero items on it, and I am am unable to suggest the first item for it.
Like all others I can suggest lots that can't be on the list, beginning with (1) Join EEA/EFTA (2) any policy at all on migrants/refugees (3) anything that increases taxes (4) anything that removes a halfpenny from any pensioner.
Pledge a methodical increase training medical staff each year until output equals 100% of requirement for the NHS.
Change working practises in the NHS, so that contracting is reduced, which will save money. Paying more per standard hour may be required but still cheaper than agency rates.
Break down the barriers between degrees, apprenticeships and other training - a modular system where a New Degree can consist of a mix of academic and practical work over a period of time. Companies that do such training (if it meets strict criteria) can claim 100% (or even more) for tax relief.
100k fines for employing undocumented workers. Same for deliberate pay below minimum wage. 50k to the employee and indefinite leave to remain for the undocumented - if they give evidence that leads to a conviction.
Go after the small boat organisers - £1m fine in addition to a prosecution for endangering life (make that extraditable offence, so international warrants can be issued). Half the fine to those who give evidence on conviction.
Abolish leasehold.
An interesting idea - how will you deal with those who don’t want to take over the shared management of flats?
Every other country in the world manages and my impression is that the vast majority of leaseholders would be delighted.
Can't please everyone. Only get yourself into a mess if you try.
Comments
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/31/labour-mps-former-aide-cleared-of-forgery-and-in-workplace
SFAICS that list has precisely Zero items on it, and I am am unable to suggest the first item for it.
Like all others I can suggest lots that can't be on the list, beginning with (1) Join EEA/EFTA (2) any policy at all on migrants/refugees (3) anything that increases taxes (4) anything that removes a halfpenny from any pensioner.
If (as in previous cases) they were protesting against the GRR etc, the idiots would of course be elevated to hero status.
Sorry, not sorry.
Fast bowler Jofra Archer is unlikely to play any red-ball cricket before the Ashes series starts in June, according to Sussex head coach Paul Farbrace.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/65119214
No-one will dare to put forward any policies that actually address any of the huge problems we have.
And there will be a cacophany of right-wing and left-wing shitposting, amplified by the horrors of social media.
I might skip it ... again.
condolences if youre reading, just saw this
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2023/03/29/dm-thomas-writer-best-known-novel-white-hotel-who-divided-opinion/
If such a moment doesn't occur, he'll go in October '24 (if he's sensible) or January '25 (if he has a death wish).
So.
Will there be a time when Sunak is confident of winning?
The committee was split on the severity of [Margaret Ferrier’s] punishment, with Allan Dorans, the SNP MP, and the Conservative members Alberto Costa, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Sir Charles Walker, all voting to have her suspended for just nine days.
Margaret Ferrier (ex-SNP) facing a 30 day suspension from the Commons for not isolating after a positive COVID test.
I know it’s a very different set of circumstances, but it’s hard to see Ferrier getting suspended and facing a possible by-election, but then Johnson getting off.
Edit: I see I am late to the discussion - apols
1) Labour could easily be complacent
2) Unlike a GE, Labour won't be able to campaign that electing a Labour MP will help Labour get into government. Any Labour MP elected now will just be a backbench opposition MP.
3) I expect Humza will ensure SNP HQ throw all the resources and activists they can muster to defend it
I still think Labour will win mind.
I read with some ... quizzicality ... that SeanT has a sister called Caitlin Thomas.
US asset prices are only going one way, until the fed pivots
I don’t agree with using population. After all, the purpose of a GE is to choose a government, and if you draw boundaries to equalize population rather than electorate then you are applying a positive weighting to electors that happen to live in an area where a relatively large number of inhabitants are not registered, and perhaps are not qualified to vote (e.g. an area with a lot of young families, hence a disproportionate number of under-18s, or one with a large number of resident aliens not from Commonwealth countries or the Irish Republic). It’s hard to see why your vote should effectively count for more just because you live in such an area.
IER has the benefit of making malpractice slightly more difficult and it also stops the former practice of some LAs of simply carrying forward existing registrations from year to year even if no new registration form has been submitted. I had a friend, a Hackney resident, who died in 2010 and for years after, his widow was distressed to receive a voting card for him every time an election came round. She contacted the council several times but was ignored. It was only IER that put a stop to it.
The new ID requirements are perfectly reasonable and I hope future governments will retain them. I’d like to go further and take firmer measures to tackle postal vote fraud.
I agree with using other admin records to keep registers accurate, though, and if the German system is indeed as you describe, that’s well worth a look.
It would just be outrageous given Johnson isn't just under investigation for breaking Covid regulations but for lying to Parliament.
If Sunak continues to fail to recover the Truss deficit then all of these pundits and outlets will be banging the drum for Boris once more.
This should all be undertaken by non politicians, not politicians.
Johnson faces the slightly different Privileges Committee, which has the same MPs except a different Labour MP as chair, but no lay members. If the MPs vote the same way in his case, Johnson survives with a 9-day suspension, with 3 Con + 1 SNP against 1 Con + 2 Lab. However, Dorans is probably voting in a partisan way: he’s protecting the SNP in the Ferrier vote, but could swap sides for the Johnson vote. Then Johnson is looking at a longer suspension and possible by-election. Presumably the key swing vote is actually the Tory who voted for a longer suspension for Ferrier: Andy Carter.
https://twitter.com/tom_bullock_/status/1641395143633690627
A file has been referred following the investigate and the office may be charged.
Would this give the family closure ?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/police-officer-could-face-criminal-charges-over-fatal-shooting-of-chris-kaba/ar-AA19g0S4?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=69e45302e7dd4015937fac72ca4730ec&ei=10
Change working practises in the NHS, so that contracting is reduced, which will save money. Paying more per standard hour may be required but still cheaper than agency rates.
Break down the barriers between degrees, apprenticeships and other training - a modular system where a New Degree can consist of a mix of academic and practical work over a period of time. Companies that do such training (if it meets strict criteria) can claim 100% (or even more) for tax relief.
100k fines for employing undocumented workers. Same for deliberate pay below minimum wage. 50k to the employee and indefinite leave to remain for the undocumented - if they give evidence that leads to a conviction.
Go after the small boat organisers - £1m fine in addition to a prosecution for endangering life (make that extraditable offence, so international warrants can be issued). Half the fine to those who give evidence on conviction.
The ID-Card is linked to this registration and so is the voting register. I have never needed to register with an electoral register as it is done automatically.
There is probably a very small minority who deliberately forget to register a change of address for political reasons, but sooner or later you will have some problem with it. There are certainly some overseas casual workers who never register, often to avoid paying health isurance, but these are people who are really part of the black market and usually are only here for a year or two, or they end up registering sooner or later.
On another comment about using OPN population for constituency boundaries being biassed: if the ONS has good information on numbers of people living in specific areas, they certainly also have good information about numbers of adults/children in that area.
NEW THREAD
We need something novel to pep up the election. Sweden to declare war on the UK. Banning Facebook. A proper focus on red throated diver populations. Abolishing limited overs cricket. Restoring Middlesex as a proper county. Putting Penrith back into Cumberland. Compulsory pink custard with spotted dick in (free) primary school dinners.
Can't please everyone. Only get yourself into a mess if you try.